31. NICO
31
NICO
“ W hat the fuck does Martin Brooks want with the spa project?” Jack glances at the sky, where speckles of rain begin to fall in a summer haze. Petrichor fills my nostrils as we pace down the pavement. Side by side, we weave between other city office workers.
"There is no way the man has good intentions,” Jack continues, his voice low. "He knows what Dad did… who he was. I don’t want him anywhere near Kate.”
His agitation bleeds across the space between us. Of all the people to be Kate’s point of contact, Martin Brooks is far from ideal. His rage on discovering Gerard’s dodgy dealings was extreme; if Gerard hadn’t died soon after, I reckon Martin would’ve killed him.
“Calm down.”
“Calm down?” Jack’s eyes turn wild and his voice is a raw whisper, as though his attempt to control himself makes the words scrape his throat. “He’s wrangled his way onto this project deliberately. This is Kate’s project. It means a lot to her. I’d put money on it Martin wants to fuck it up for her. He was supposed to retire. To stay retired.” He scrunches his face, then releases the tension. “Fuck. I have a lot wrapped up in this.”
“So does Hawkston. It’ll be all right.”
I don’t know that it will be, but I can’t stand Jack looking at me like he’s begging me to save him. Again. I haven’t had dealings with Martin Brooks since the original deal to buy Lansen fell through. Since I paid Martin off to keep his mouth shut, and he scurried away like a rat.
He got everything he was owed and more. So why do I have a bad feeling about this?
Jack’s eyes search mine. “What do we do?”
It’s raining heavily now, but neither of us has an umbrella. Nor do we have a destination, so we’re walking aimlessly through driving rain.
“Nothing, yet. He’ll make his demands known if he has any.” My voice is calm, but inside I’m unnerved. “Do you want to tell Kate?” My stomach flips as I say her name. If we’re ever going to tell her what really happened, this is the moment. I hope to God Jack says yes, because I don’t want to lie to her anymore, especially not after everything that’s happened between us.
“Not unless we have to,” Jack answers, his frown so deep his brows almost meet in the middle. “Dad didn’t want her to know—”
“He’s dead.” Jack looks at me aghast, but I continue, regardless. “Maybe honesty is more important than keeping a promise to a dead man.”
“We can’t be honest ,” Jack pleads. “None of this is fucking honest. We buried the crime. We papered over the cracks with cash.”
“My cash.”
“And I’m grateful. I’ve paid you back, haven’t I? Worked all hours of the day to return every penny.”
“I know.”
Jack’s agitation shows no signs of slowing. “Then why the fuck is Martin back? We gave him more than Dad stole from him.”
“It’s the spa project,” I tell him. “And the fact I finally bought Lansen. We did the deal he’d wanted to do back then. It must be painful to watch from the sidelines, knowing it ought to have been him.” I place a hand on Jack’s arm and he stills, the two of us standing face-to-face in the rain. “Relax. There’s no paper trail. No evidence. Only a series of loans that were paid back in full. Business is dirty sometimes. But this is clean. We’re clean.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Any concerns on that front, you can put out of mind right now. Money’s a curse and blessing, but if you have enough, you can clean up any mess.”
Jack exhales so heavily that he shrinks a couple of inches. “Fine. Then we don’t have to tell Kate. Don’t breathe a fucking word to her. If there’s one last thing I can do for my father, it’s protect his memory. His legacy.”
I flinch as images of Gerard Lansen in the hospital flash before me. Tubes and needles protruding from his body as he begged me not to tell his daughter what he’d done.
She doesn’t need to know. She never needs to know .
He was a broken shell of a man by the end; he’d been covering his tracks for months, siphoning money from the company to cover his debts. He’d gambled away vast sums on the stock markets, throwing good money after bad until there was nothing left but what he could steal. The house was mortgaged to the hilt, and the bank was going to call in the loan and force the sale.
The whole thing was a mess, and Debbie Lansen was completely oblivious. Too self-centred to notice what her husband was up to. That, combined with the fact that Gerard was a skilled addict who’d hidden his vice away like a precious jewel, meant no one knew until it was too late.
“Take Kate off the project.” Jack’s anxious voice tears me from my memories. “Take her off the spa project. She can’t be dealing with Martin Brooks. I don’t know what he’s up to, but I don’t want him talking to her.”
“I can’t do that. I won’t do that.”
His eyes narrow. “Why not?”
I search for a reason that isn’t because I’m sleeping with her and she’s completely bewitched me and I won’t do anything that’s going to hurt her .
“Because she deserves to be on the project. You know that. I’m not going to rearrange everything to keep a promise we made to a man who’s been dead for nearly a decade, even if that man is your father. If she finds out, she finds out.”
Jack’s eyes go wide, his eyebrows quirk upwards. “You have to do something.”
“I’ll call Martin Brooks directly. I’ll deal with him. Find out what he wants.”
Jack opens his mouth to speak, but at that exact moment, I see something dark flapping at me from across the other side of the street.
“Hey, Uncle Nico!” Charlie is waving a vast black golfing umbrella with Hawkston printed on the side, and yelling at the top of his voice.
I wave back, but Jack grips my hand in both of his, reclaiming my attention. “Don’t say anything to Kate. Please. If someone has to break it to her, it should be me. He was our father. Please, Nico. Swear it.”
Fuck . Every nerve in my body rebels, stinging my skin. I’ve held this back from Kate for long enough, but Jack’s right. Gerard was their father, and this isn’t my secret to tell. With a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach, I nod, and Jack, seemingly satisfied, dashes back to the office in the pelting rain.
Charlie runs across the road, leaping over a puddle onto my side of the pavement. There’s hardly anyone else around now; the rain sent everyone scurrying for cover.
He holds the umbrella up so I can fit beneath it, too. I’m already soaking, but I duck under anyway.
“What’s up?” I ask.
He frowns. “There’s something I wanted to tell you.”
“Walk with me,” I say, and we pace back towards the office together, Charlie easily matching my stride.
“I saw something weird on Kate Lansen’s phone,” he tells me.
My heart skips a beat. Did I send her something inappropriate that he might have seen?
“What was it?”
“She had a picture of the van I graffitied. The exact same one. The one driven by the man…” His voice hitches and my senses come into keen focus.
I put a steadying hand on his shoulder, not wanting him to have to dwell on thoughts of his mother’s infidelity. “I know the one you mean. Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
That is an odd coincidence. “Okay. Leave it with me.” I feel his shoulder loosen under my hand. “Don’t say anything to Kate about it yet, though. I’m sure your dad doesn’t want it known that—”
“That he’s a cuckold?”
I raise an eyebrow, hoping to hell that Charlie’s not about to tell me my brother’s into watching his wife be fucked by other men. The conversation would be wrong on too many levels to count. “Where did you learn that word?”
“Othello. We studied it last term.”
“Ah.” Plain old cheating, then. Phew . “Actually, I was going to say it’s probably best people don’t know about you drawing on the side of someone’s vehicle. You could’ve been charged with vandalism.”
“I know. Sorry.”
He looks so remorseful I can’t help but smile at the kid. He’s softer since his arrest, as if the run-in with the police has tamed him, and rather than the angry teenager, I can see the young boy beneath, trapped in a body that’s nearly a man’s.
We reach the Hawkston building and take the lift. I bid Charlie goodbye at the sixth floor and continue up to my office.
“Mr. Hawkston,” my PA chirrups from behind her desk.
“Victoria.”
Her eyes widen as she notices I’m soaked through. She jumps up and rushes to me, helping to peel off my wet coat. “You should have sent for the car,” she says, folding my coat over her arm.
I frown, flicking damp hair off my forehead with one hand. “I was preoccupied. Could you find Martin Brooks’ details for me? I think he’s at Argentum now. Put him through to me when you get hold of him.”
I head to my office and take a seat. I don’t think Jack’s right to keep this from Kate. I never agreed with it, but when your dying godfather asks you to do one last thing for him, you say yes.
And then you fly to the US and bury yourself in work so you never have to think about any of it again. Until Lansen becomes a viable proposition again and your best friend wants you to think about completing that deal you never finished all those years ago.
What a fucking mess .
My phone rings.
“Mr. Brooks on line one for you,” Victoria says when I answer.
“Put him through.”
Victoria clicks off and Martin comes on the line.
“Mr. Hawkston,” he oozes, more than a hint of menace in the greeting, and it has me clenching a fist. “Figured I’d be hearing from you sooner or later.”
“I’m sorry to hear retirement didn’t work out for you.”
He chuckles; a sound full of phlegm and mucus that makes me want to retch. “It did get a little boring. And then I heard the news that you were back, buying the company I used to have a fifty per cent stake in. And my interest was… piqued, shall we say.”
“What do you want?”
“What I’ve wanted for a long while. I want a bite of the spa project. That was my fucking idea.” Irritation skitters up my spine at the lie. Martin might have been there, but the spa was Gerard’s. “And now the Lansen kids are taking all the credit? That doesn't sit well with me, and you know how I like to keep everything fair.”
I take a deep breath, restraining the desire to yell at this delusional arsehole. “So do I. And the treatment you got eight years ago was very fair. You should be off sailing the ocean or drinking cocktails on a beach somewhere. Not sticking your nose into business that has nothing to do with you anymore.”
“But the Lansens never paid, did they? They didn’t have to lift a finger. You tidied everything up for them. And that is most definitely not fair.”
I say nothing. It’s true that I did fix it all… I could’ve walked away, but that would have been the end of my relationship with Gerard. The man who’d been more of a father to me than my own prick of a dad. If I’d walked away, it would have ended my relationship with Jack. With Kate…
“Even Gerard did nothing but sit there in his misery,” Martin continues. “Didn’t lift a bloody finger to sort it out. Hardly even ashamed of how he’d destroyed our company—”
“He died, Mr. Brooks. Shame, guilt, stress… whatever you want to call it. It killed him.”
Martin emits an indistinct sound that vibrates down the phone. “My reputation took a hit, you know, when you pulled out of the deal. Like the company wasn’t good enough. All sorts of rumours about what a poor job I must have done.” He clears his throat. “There’s no money that compensates for a destroyed reputation. I hope you know that, Mr. Hawkston.”
“Is that a threat?”
“What you did was barely legal.”
“I paid you back for loans. I repaid debts. With interest. There would be no Lansen without me. You would have been forced into administration. I saved your reputation. It was all above board. There are documents to prove it.”
“Come now, Nico. There’s no need to pretend among friends. You and I know that’s not quite true, don’t we?”
“You’ve got nothing on me, Mr. Brooks. And I’d advise you to drop this before I sue you for slander.”
I hear the smack of wet lips down the phone as if he’s cracking his mouth open and shut. “I’ll take this up with Kate Lansen then. She’s in charge of the spa project, isn’t she?”
“Leave Kate out of this,” I fire back, my voice rough. “You deal directly with me on the project. All calls come through me. Understand?”
He wheezes for a few seconds, and a dark part of my soul hopes he drops dead.
“My seat on the Argentum board is very influential, Mr. Hawkston. I have David Webster’s ear on this project. And I’ve been having some thoughts about the direction we should take. It’s possible Hawkston isn’t the right partner for us anymore.”
Fuck. Just how much control does Martin Brooks have over the future of Kate’s project?
“David wouldn’t fall for this,” I argue. “He knows we’re the best there is—”
“Good speaking to you again, Mr. Hawkston.”
The line clicks, and the bastard is gone.